Elaine Stritch, a Broadway actress and singer whose career spanned seven decades, died this morning at her home in Birmingham, Michigan. She was 89.

Ms. Stritch, known for her brassy voice, flamboyant personality, public struggles with alcohol addiction, and her signature uniform: a crisp white shirt worn over black tights and no pants, had undergone surgery for stomach cancer earlier this year, said her friend Hunter Herdlicka. The exact cause of death is unknown, he said.

“She was such a survivor, I didn’t know if she was going to to go any minute or in another five years,” he said. Ms. Stritch last performed four months ago, in Detroit, when she sang Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” at a benefit, he said.

Director Hal Prince remembered Ms. Stritch as “an original. There was no one else like her,” he said. “She was brilliant, so creative, and irreplaceable. There was nobody who played a role she originated who could remotely come close to what she created. And she was stunningly honest, incapable of lying—to a fault, I would say. I loved her and I’ll miss her.”

Ms. Stritch, born on February 2, 1925 in Detroit, Michigan, made her Broadway debut in 1946 in the comedy “Loco.” She went on to perform in “Pal Joey” and “Bus Stop” and to become a leading lady for Noel Coward and Stephen Sondheim, and she is closely associated with Mr. Sondheim’s music, especially “The Ladies Who Lunch” from “Company.”

The documentary filmmaker DA Pennebaker memorably captured her recording that song for the show’s cast album in 1970. In a poignant but terrifying scene, Ms. Stritch almost has a breakdown because she can’t hit the notes during a late-night recording session. “Oh, shut up,” she screams to her own voice when listening to a recording of the track, realizing how bad she sounds. She came back a day or so later and nailed the number.

Ms. Stritch married John Bay in 1973 after meeting him while living abroad in London. His family owned Bay’s English Muffins, and Ms. Stritch sent her friends a box of them every Christmas, said her longtime agent, Joel Dean.

She told the WSJ. Magazine in February that meeting Mr. Bay “was the first time I felt like, I don’t know whether I’m in love or not, but I want to get in his pocket and I want him to take me home. I never talked about sex because I didn’t know what the hell that was, but I knew I wanted to be in John’s pocket. Being in love is being in somebody’s pocket.”

She and Mr. Bay returned to the U.S. in 1982, and Mr. Bay died that same year, sending Ms. Stritch into a depression. She gave up drinking in her 60s, staying sober for 25 years. In her 80s, she began allowing herself a drink or two a day — a cosmopolitan, said Herdlicka.

Her one-woman show, “Elaine Stritch at Liberty,” premiered at the Public Theater in 2001 before transferring to Broadway. She won a Tony for the performance, which brought her back into the limelight in her 70s with its confessional and heartfelt tone — she told stories about encounters with Marlon Brando, dating Ben Gazzara and of being an understudy for Ethel Merman. Then there were the songs.

In 2005, Ms. Stritch began performing a cabaret act at the Cafe Carlyle in the Carlyle Hotel. The indefatigable performer appeared as a guest star on NBC’s “30 Rock” in 2007, playing Alec Baldwin’s mother. In 2010, she starred in Mr. Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” on Broadway. A documentary about her life, “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me,” came out earlier this year.

She lived at the Carlyle until 2013, when she moved back to Birmingham to be closer to her family.

“Sometimes she would say, ‘You know, I feel like I’m about to leave the building,’” said Herdlicka. “And sometimes she would say, ‘I really don’t want to yet.’” She is not survived by any children.